Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to the field of computers and computer devices. More particularly, the present invention relates to a computer device and a method for controlling access to a web resource.
Description of Related Art
As is well recognized in the field of computer security, there is an on-going need to protect computer devices from malicious content. In particular, it is desired to protect the computer devices from malicious content which may be introduced or propagated by actions of a user, such as accessing web resources on the Internet. While some of the web resources may be trusted, other untrusted web resources may comprise malicious content.
In the related art, it is known to isolate untrusted content by limiting access to web resources from certain computer devices (e.g. ‘blacklists’ and ‘whitelists’ of particular URLs). A difficulty arises, however, in that these isolation mechanisms typically preclude all access, including legitimate access, to the content, resources or sites which are deemed to be potentially untrusted. Further, these known mechanisms typically do not differentiate between access to the web resources initiated by user actions and access to the web resources initiated programmatically, for example by processes or applications running on the computer devices. In other words, protecting the computer devices from malicious content tends to then inhibit or deny legitimate access to desired web resources. Conversely, relaxing the isolation mechanisms, so as to allow access to the web resources, may expose the computer devices to malicious content. Hence, there is still a need to control access to the web resources whilst robustly and effectively isolating malicious content.
The example embodiments have been provided with a view to addressing at least some of the difficulties that are encountered in current computer devices and computer networks, whether those difficulties have been specifically mentioned above or will otherwise be appreciated from the discussion herein.